It started out as a normal night for amateur astronomer Rick Saty last Wednesday evening. After setting up his 14-inch reflector telescope in his backyard and collimating it (a process in which the lenses are adjusted to bring them all into perfect alignment), he turned his telescope at a variety of objects in the night sky. Like he always does, the first thing Saty checked out was the Orion Nebula and then the Andromeda Galaxy, “They’re so inspiring.”
But then Saty turned his telescope to an area of the night sky which he had not yet fully explored. “I am scouring the night sky using my own systematic grid method and I have covered approximately 43% of the visible sky, so far.” said Saty. “Tonight started as any other night – just another block in the grid.”
But the picture that Saty found in his eyepiece that night was unusual and frightening. What he found in his eyepiece was a heretofore unknown planet situated in the constellation Aquarius. “The first thing I noticed was its weird color – it was an icy, but yet, scalding purple. The second thing I noticed were the horns,” said Saty. “Then things started getting really weird – I felt cold and I heard the devil whispering to me. It was then that I realized that I had found hell.”
We asked Dr. Richard Simmons at NASA what he knows about the planet so far. “It appears that this planet’s star went supernovae approximately 2000 years ago. The planet being relatively close to its star was singed pretty badly. It’s approximately 45 light-years from Earth and spectrographs show a large quantity of sulfur,” answered Dr. Simmons. “We’ll have more for you in the coming weeks.
Because hell is apparently located in Aquarius, we asked esteemed astrologer, Tery Nazoon what effect this discovery would have on horoscopes. She was adamant that all people with the sign Aquarius will go to hell. But then again, she’s an idiot.
Believing this to be a case of national security, we called former president George W. Bush at his Texas ranch and asked him what the United States should do with this discovery. “We should bomb the hell out of it!” He answered.
The Pope was not available for comments.
For now, Saty says he will be storing his telescope in his garage. The experience of finding hell was something that he says will take a few months to get over. But after that? Saty is hopeful that he will find heaven within a few years.